ME Bank trials workplace videoconferencing kiosks

Members Equity Bank is trialling workplace videoconferencing kiosks as part of its strategy to help grow its customer base, and is aiming to roll out the kiosks to six workplaces in the next six months, said the bank’s enterprise architect, Jem Richards.

The bank began trialling the kiosks at its head office in Melbourne during the third quarter of this year.

The kiosks will combine videoconferencing with ATM and digital marketing, and will allow customers to speak to a service representative remotely.

“Someone can come up to the kiosk when the workplace banker is not there and if they see an offer for a term deposit, for example, and they’d like to talk to somebody about it [then] they can actually click on the screen, pick the video connection to our call centre and actually start talking to an expert,” Richards said.

The bank is also deploying a private cloud to help support its IT transformation, which is to be completed in mid-2015. The transformation is to increase business agility and streamline operations. Richards said the bank may eventually move its entire IT infrastructure into a hybrid cloud environment.

“When we looked at our journey and decided that we were going to build an internal cloud one of the things we said was, 'Next time we get to a refresh cycle which is probably going to be four years from now we will absolutely look at potentially [moving] everything from on-premise to the cloud’. I’m not saying that it will happen but it will be on the table,” he said.

“Ultimately, we’re looking at a hybrid cloud solution as well. I really believe [as] an organisation that we’ll never have all our infrastructure on-premise."

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